the amy pond dictionary
by broken halleluiah
Summary: Because women don't always say precisely what they mean. Rory Williams learns five definitions for "I hate you."
1. a proper telescope

**In honor of the most wonderfully dysfunctional romance known to Doctor Who.**

**Spoilers for... the Eleventh Hour. So basically, no spoilers. (You know you just read _spoilers _in a singsong voice. :D)**

1.

The best thing about sitting on that particular branch of that particular tree was that her Aunt Sharon couldn't see them from the back window. In the part of the yard that she could supervise, they had to be kids at play, but in that tree, well, they were pirates- they were jungle explorers- they hunted crocodiles, and occasionally the Loch Ness Monster.

But on hot, clear summer nights like this one, Amelia and her friend Rory were always astronomers.

They didn't have all the correct stargazing equipment, and sometimes had to substitute things like toilet paper tubes and magnifying glass lenses for telescopes. For the hundredth time that evening he heard Amelia bewail her lack of a "proper" telescope.

(He had amassed a vast fortune of twenty-eight pounds in his ten years of life, and he thought he would probably have enough for one by Christmas.)

"Once we have a proper telescope, we'll see it." She was prattling on, as usual, about her choice subject. It had been years, and she didn't mention him as often now as before, except when the moon was as bright as it was that night. "The Doctor's got a spaceship, and he might fly overhead sometimes. It's a police box, so we won't confuse it for an airplane or anything."

"How does he fly a police box? Do you suppose it's magic or just, like, outer space science?" Rory pondered aloud.

Amelia shrugged, but she didn't look at him like he was a total moron, so he ventured another question that was pressing on his mind. "Do you think… does he visit other kids, besides you? I mean… is he like Santa Claus?"

Amelia frowned. "How would he be like Santa?"

"Does he give you things if you're good or… does he fly 'round the whole world watching everybody?"

Amelia huffed an impatient sigh. "Well, _yes_, Rory, but… Santa Claus isn't real." She flinched, but he didn't seem surprised.

Rory breathed a sigh of relief. She already knew. He swallowed hard and voiced his theory delicately. "I know, but… he used to be. Maybe Doctor is like Santa… maybe he was a real person and then he…isn't now."

Her jaw dropped in horror, and even in the dark, he could see her cheeks brightening as furiously as her eyes. "He's not _dead_, Rory. He is not dead and he's _real _and I _thought _you believed in him!"

"I did! I did, but… I believed in Santa, too…" Rory said in his best _please-listen-to-reason_ voice.

She promptly yanked out a handful of leaves and threw them at his face. Her voice was a piercing shriek. "Shut _up! _Shut up, Rory, I _hate you!_"

And then before he could blink, Amelia had slid off the branch and landed with a rough jolt. She darted across the lawn, flaming red face buried in her hands, flaming red hair streaming behind her.

Rory broke a twig off the tree and sat, listening to cicadas, fingering the rough bark and periodically snapping off tiny pieces. He wondered why there was a slicing pain in chest when he couldn't see the thing hurting him.

(Rory wouldn't learn the term _heartache _for years- but he would learn it from her. Of course he would.)

When the twig had been reduced to half its former splendor, he slid out of the tree and went after her. She wasn't under the slide, she wasn't in the bushes beside the fence, and she wasn't beneath the deck. He finally wandered around to the side of the house and found her huddled beside the air conditioning unit, which buzzed and rattled cheerfully with the cicadas. Her eyes were red, but she hurriedly wiped them and stared stubbornly at the grass as he sat down beside her. Rory snapped another piece off the twig and handed it to Amelia. She silently tore it to pieces.

"The moon's so big tonight," Rory said after a long interval, glancing up. "You don't even need a proper telescope."

"So big you could touch it," Amelia said, eyes hungrily examining the gleaming surface. The twig-snapping was the only thing that stopped her reaching for it. "I think he's real, Rory. I want him to be real. Because if it's real, then I can touch it." She swiped her streaming nose with a fist. "He could take me there."

And Rory said the one thing he knew would make her smile. "Amelia, we can go to the moon any old time."

He took her hand, and this time, they were astronauts.

* * *

It wasn't until the moon had risen high overhead and he knew he was in danger of being called home that Rory brought it up again.

"So… do you? Hate me, I mean." He hesitated. "Do you really hate me?"

She blinked at him as if the idea was totally foreign to her. "Of course not. That's not what I meant at all."

"What did you mean, then?"

(It had seemed pretty straightforward to him.)

"I just hate this whole stupid planet," Amelia admitted, lapsing back into the stormy silence she had shaken off during their make-believe. She turned and shook a fist at the moon sternly. "You're gonna be touched, moon! Don't say I did'na warn you!"

(If anyone could reach it, it was her.)

She smiled at Rory over her shoulder. "You can come, too."

(He learned that, sometimes, _I hate you_ was Amy Pond for _get me out of here._)


	2. just a passing fad

**A/N: Who doesn't love teenage Amy and Rory! No spoilers, unless you squint. The Doctor will be in the next chapter. :)**

2.

She never mentioned the fifth psychiatrist to the Doctor because, technically, the woman was just a "life guidance counselor" and, technically, he wasn't responsible for the issues that sent her there.

(Although, _technically_, couldn't she trace everything back to him?)

No one was responsible. No one ever told Amy Pond she was fat. She was never bullied about her weight, and it wasn't as if she laid awake at night fretting about her body image. It was like the other ideas that Amy's mind occasionally latched onto. One day when she was fifteen years old, she just _decided _she was going to be skinnier, and she _decided _that was going to happen because she ate nothing but carrot sticks. It was just a fad diet that other girls gave up on after three days, but then, Amy had always been dangerously stubborn.

Her Life Guidance Counselor sat her down beside her Aunt Sharon and told them that Amy needed to find one trusted friend to confide in, someone who could be strong for her in the cavernous pit of the lunchroom. Her first thought- she brushed her first thought aside in embarrassment and decided instead to bare her soul to Mels, who would hopefully blow her off as not having a legitimate problem and leave her to her carrot sticks in peace.

Mels, as usual, didn't cooperate. "Well, you've got to eat, brickhead. If you don't, your kids will be born all screwed up, like, birth defects."

"I'm never having kids,"Amy snapped darkly.

(Mels laughed.)

So on the day that Amy almost passed out in her biology lab, over a flaming Bunsen burner, she found Rory at his locker, grabbed his elbow, and whispered, _"There's something I need to tell you."_

He nodded patiently and listened with the appropriate amount of surprise and concern and composure, but there was something else, this odd longing light in his eyes, like he would squeeze her hand if he could only reach it. He agreed to sit and eat lunch with her every day until it didn't hurt anymore.

(The previous month, Amy's aunt had gone to answer the bell and found Rory Williams on her doorstep, rocking back and forth on his heels, hair rumpled as if he had mussed it up nervously.

"_Excuse me, ma'am, but… I'm worried about your niece…")_

He closed his locker quickly so she wouldn't notice there was a book on eating disorders lying on the bottom shelf.

She glared at him across the table every day for the winter of that year- she whined and she protested- _how would she be bikini-ready by spring?- _she liked carrots just an awful lot, really-

"Rory Williams," she hissed in a whisper. "You are going to ruin my life. I am going to die old and fat and alone and surrounded by cats, waiting until my final breath for a man who will never be able to see past my blubber."

"That's not going to happen." He couldn't quite meet her eyes.

(She wanted to believe him. But sometimes she just looked in the mirror and saw those chubby cheeks and felt like such a _child_, and she would never grow up. She would always be a kid and she would _always be waiting._)

Maybe if he was any other boy he would take her hand and tell her she was hot and gorgeous and she would never have to wait another day. But he was stupid Rory and he wanted to be a stupid doctor when he grew up and he just lowered his stupid voice and said, "Go on. You can do it. One more bite."

"I hate you," Amy murmured around the mouthful of rich-in-fiber pasta.

He tried not to take it personally. According to the book in the bottom of his locker, sometimes she felt powerless, and she took her frustration out on the people who were trying to help her.

(In other words, sometimes _I hate you _was Amy Pond for _I hate myself._)


	3. breathe

**A/N: Set anytime after Season Five. Warning: CHARACTER DEATH.**

**(JK, it's just Rory. ;D)**

* * *

"_BREATHE, you moron! If you ever do anything for me, for the love of God, BREATHE."_

Something small but solid whacked Rory's chest. A sharp burst of pain, again and again. Bright spots danced behind his eyelids as he struggled to open them, gasping at the force being pounded into the region of his heart. There was a scuffle nearby and the pounding stopped. Somewhere in the background, garbled but shrill, he heard his wife shrieking, "You killed him! You _killed _him!" The sound roared in his ears, faint and then deafening, in waves, like the ocean in a seashell.

Then the Doctor's calm tone. "I've already successfully restarted his heart, Pond, so please refrain from beating it to a standstill again. If you'd like to do something useful, why don't you go and make him some tea?"

The Doctor dragged Amy toward a doorway of the console room. Rory heard rather than saw her slap him across the face before he managed to close the door behind her.

"Ah! And he rejoins us in the land of the living! Good _morning, _Rory!" The Doctor paced back over to where Rory was sprawled on the floor, cheerfully rubbing his own reddening cheek. "We'll give her a minute. Glad you're alright. I did say blue wire to green wire, though, be sure to pay attention next time."

Next time.

Rory moaned.

"You may be experiencing a slight tingling and the sensation that your internal organs are aflame- that'll be the electrocution. Nasty business, electrocution," the Doctor said introspectively. "Rough on the hair. And the sinuses. How are your sinuses?"

Rory forced himself up on an elbow and focused on breathing. "You said yellow. Blue wire to yellow wire."

The Doctor frowned deeply. "I said nothing of the sort." He bent down and took Rory's pulse as he tried to prop himself up against the console.

"I very specifically remember you saying yellow. Twice." The image of the electric panel was rather seared in his memory at the moment.

The Doctor looked personally affronted by that. "Why would I say that? That's the wrong wire."

"Well, obviously," Rory huffed. "You could've been mistaken."

"More than likely, you were just being human. Oh, there's Amelia with your tea! Nothing like a good cuppa to-"

Amy rudely interrupted by throwing the tea tray at him. He caught it, narrowly, with a great frantic clattering. She dropped to her knees beside Rory, cheeks still flaming, and grabbed his shoulder roughly. "You _died_," she hissed in a rather accusatory tone.

"I'm sorry," he whispered back blankly.

(He seemed to apologize for this more often than most.)

"Oh, let's not exaggerate, his heart was stopped for fifteen, twenty seconds _maximum_. That's just taking a breather." The Doctor stopped because Amy was snorting like a bull. He wisely backed around to the other side of the console with the tea. Amy sat down beside Rory and wordlessly lowered his sore head into her lap.

"Please don't ever do that thing you thought was CPR again," he said quietly as her fingers threaded through his.

"Don't ever scare me like that again, and it's a deal," she snapped.

He closed his eyes as Amy stroked his hair back and pressed her cheek against his forehead silently.

(It was damp.)

Somewhere in the background, oblivious to their little world spinning in slow motion, the Doctor prattled.

"I ought to test your hearing before I let you all on board such a delicate ship as the TARDIS," he was murmuring. "Certainly before I let you help with the repairs. I'll add that to the list: Test companions for color blindness, motion sickness, hearing loss, and stupidity."

"You said _yellow_, Doctor," Rory called hoarsely.

"Oh, _now _your hearing is excellent!"

(Amy wished they would shut up so she could listen to his heartbeat for a bit.)

"Don't you listen to him ever again," she ordered sharply. "Don't you touch anything, Rory Williams- Oh, I _hate_ you." She buried her face in his hair.

(_I hate you _was sometimes Amy Pond for _don't leave me._)


	4. needing a miracle

**A/N: Spoilers for Asylum of the Daleks... The sad chapter... Enjoy anyway!**

**If you missed chapter 3 because of my awkward posting time, check that one out real fast- it was my favorite to write! :) And please, if you have two eyes and ten fingers and a computer keyboard and a brain with an opinion on what you read, drop a review! :D**

* * *

4.

Amy Pond stared at the single blue line and remembered a time when her life had been full of miracles.

(She wished that fantastic dream could bleed through to the mundane, just once, oh, please, just one more miracle, even though she'd already had more than her share.)

Amy stared at the single blue line and the acceptance came, gradually, that there wouldn't ever be another. She leaned against the sink and watched that other redhead in the mirror sob.

(Her makeup was perfect when she walked out again.)

* * *

Rory marveled that his wife was even rigid in her sleep. He pulled off his scrubs and collapsed into bed beside her in the dark. The silence would be so cold and empty when she awoke, but for the moment, he could make-believe it was simply peaceful. He pressed his lips to Amy's forehead, and she wasn't ice after all.

(She wasn't asleep either, and her eyes slid open just a crack. She could still see his lips on little Melody's forehead, the oh-so-natural tenderness in his eyes. That miracle she couldn't give him again.)

_He deserved miracles._

Her hand shot out to flick on the lamp as she sat up, promptly folding her arms across her chest. "How am I supposed to get a wink with you crashin' around at three in the morning?"

And the softness in his eyes instantly evaporated, as if he never meant for her to see it. "Excuse me for having the night shift. I know you need your beauty sleep," he muttered. He would sarcastically curtsy if he was upright.

_"Yeah, I can tell you're real sorry."_

But it was almost a subconscious act when he reached for her hand, and he was startled back to wakefulness when she jerked it away.

"Why can't you ever just give me some space?" Amy hissed with a sudden influx of venom.

(Of course he could.)

Rory rose, grabbed a pillow, and gave her some space. He let the door slam behind him.

The next night, he came home to find his stuff moved into the living room. All of it. It was a new low, and he considered bursting into _their _room and telling her off, but then he was much, much too tired.

(He never moved back in.)

* * *

In the end, they would tell all their friends it was finances, because they were talking about a bill when everything crashed down. For the thousandth time, he called her irresponsible- _"This is not your bloody TARDIS. Real life has a cost, alright?_"

And she told him that she never asked for real life. She didn't ask to settle down.

He huffed and stormed around the kitchen and looked everywhere but her icy gaze. "But when we have a family, Amy, we can't afford to live like this." It was his last attempt at pleading.

She stood up and gripped the kitchen table with both hands, leaning forward, and her voice was so dark. "Get this through your _thick _head, Rory. We will never be a family again."

(She willed him to understand what she meant, because she couldn't say it, she couldn't cry. If she cried, even now, he would hold her, and then she'd never be able to let go.)

"I can see that now!" her husband shouted. Full-volume shouted- _Rory never shouted_- "Because family is not what I'd ever call _this!_" He gestured to his evicted belongings in the living room.

(Of course he didn't understand at all.)

The chair screeched when he pulled it out to sit across from her.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," Rory murmured into his fingers.

She nodded across the table and those three little words dropped off her tongue, ever so coolly, lightly. "I hate you."

(And wouldn't you know it, sometimes that was Amy Pond for _I agree_.)


	5. four days

**Chapter last! :( Major spoilers for Angels Take Manhattan. Oh, my lovely Ponds...**

**Drop a review if you like! I'm always up for constructive criticism :)**

* * *

5.

The Angel didn't send them back to precisely the same moment. But what were a few more days to the Boy Who Waited?

(Certainly nothing to two thousand years. Nothing at all.)

It really wasn't hard, at first. He laid awake on a park bench- one long night, two, three- and every time his mind swam to the edge of sleep, he thought he heard it. The whooshing of his rescue boat.

Every night, he sat up and stared into the dark sky and didn't find what he was looking for. But there were so many more stars here than in 2011. So many stars moved overhead, but here he was, in a state of suspended animation, more or less.

It was on the fourth morning that the vague uneasiness pushed itself to the surface, because the fourth morning was cold. Rory awoke on that hard bench, sore and stiff with the night chill, and realized the seasons were still changing. Time was still passing. Time was sweeping on without him.

(_They might not be coming._)

_Yet yet yet they might not be coming YET. _It might take awhile for them to find a way back. His stay in 1938 could turn out to be a bit more long-term. And considering he was down to his last American dollar after splurging on hot dog vendors every night, he might want to find a source of income. Rory bought a newspaper off a hungry-looking little boy on the street corner, in lieu of breakfast.

He would get a job. He was a nurse, everyone needed nurses. There was a war on, wasn't there?

But oh, his nursing license would have expired, or it wouldn't be valid yet. And anyway, he didn't have it on him. He had nothing left but a few American quarters and a five-pound note, and that credit card that he had known would be no use when he took it time-traveling. No matter, they wouldn't be long, and he could do anything, he could cut grass, he could build skyscrapers until they came. He could easily survive until they came for him.

Rory clung to the newspaper and pretended he didn't see his hands shaking from the reality he couldn't handle. Not yet. They would come, even if the Doctor said they couldn't, because the Doctor lies. It was rule number one.

The Doctor's face flashed suddenly before his eyes, terrible and frightened and cold at the same time, telling him that he lived out the rest of his life alone, and there was nothing they could do. His eyes. He never lied with that look in his eyes.

Rory curled his knees to his chest and flipped through the news pages faster. It didn't matter so much. The Doctor would always take care of Amy. She had died for Rory once, but this time, the Doctor would make sure she survived without him.

But Rory still needed to do this one thing- he needed to find a job, he needed to get money, he needed to buy a paper and a pen so he could write her a letter and tell her where he'd gone to. Tell her he missed her. Tell her he loved her. Tell her he- he lived out his life and-

That meant he had to live out his life, didn't it? He couldn't exactly write and say he was throwing himself off another building. Amy and the Doctor and his beautiful daughter, Melody River Song Pond Williams Malone, had to hear that he'd made it without them.

(His dad was watering their plants.)

The nurse instinct noted vaguely that he was hyperventilating. And what was worse, he was flipping through a newspaper, looking for a job in the classified ads in the middle of the Great Depression. This was his brilliant plan for survival. He shoved a dusty sleeve into his mouth, but it did little to stifle the sobs.

* * *

(It was hardly unusual anymore to find a grown man weeping on a bench in Central Park, and the policeman had to admit he'd grown rather cold to the sight. But there was something about this fellow's response to his sharp order "_get on home, ya bum" _that gave him pause. It could have been the polite nod, or the quiet accent that was so obviously from across the pond. The officer almost turned around and asked why he was there, if he was lost, but then thought better of it. No sober man shook like that.)

* * *

The sun was going down, and it wouldn't be long before the night chill set in again.

(Rory wandered.)

He slumped against a brick wall and unfolded the newspaper over his face- let the disguise of homeless man conceal him.

(But it wasn't a disguise.)

He peered cross-eyed at the newspaper bridging his nose. Among the ads for houses for sale or rent, a fragment of text caught his eye, perhaps because it had been printed in all capital letters. An abrupt single line that seemed to shout at him from the page.

_HEY STUPID FACE- I BETTER SEE YOUR STUPID FACE DOWN AT THE WHARF FIRST THING AT THE CRACK OF DAWN._

_P.S._

_DON'T YOU DARE KEEP ME WAITING._

(He wouldn't. Not even until morning.)

* * *

She checked her watch occasionally, even though it wasn't set to the correct decade.

Amy crossed her arms over her chest and shivered and wished that the sun was on its way up instead of down. Already the evening star was rising- _Venus_, the Doctor had told her. Earth's sister planet. Worshipped by all the ancient civilizations. Thought uninhabitable until a dozen centuries after her birth.

(She'd learned all she ever would from him now.)

But the thing that made her heart flutter in fear and regret was that she could have been completely mistaken. She could have given up everything she'd ever known and still be her entire lifetime away from finding Rory.

(The wind was cold off the water.)

There were footsteps- a rustle of movement sent a pang of warming adrenaline through her body. Amy turned to face the shadowy outline standing just up the embankment on the dock, silhouetted by harbor lights. It had frozen as soon as her eyes lit on it.

Amy trembled.

(_don't blink don't blink don't blink)_

But a moment later the shadow called out her name, and her eyes widened for an entirely different reason. A patter of feet on the sand, and they collided.

(That city had seen a lot of poignant reunions- so many families clinging to each other under the Lady of the Liberty's eye, and they certainly kept the tradition. Immigrants through time. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Nothing they owned but the clothes on their backs.)

It was a long time before they could manage much besides each other's names. "You're disgusting," Amy finally said falteringly, face pressed into his chest. "Rory, you _smell._" She pulled her head back to look up at him, rubbing a thumb anxiously over the stubble on his cheek. "How long were you waiting?"

(She had never asked that question before.)

He didn't answer. He was running his fingers through her very, very red hair, and he couldn't speak.

"Tell me. Rory, tell me_ right now_," Amy pleaded. She was beginning to cry. She had come as soon as she could. "How long did you wait for me?"

"Four days," he managed, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. "Just four. It was nothing at all." His voice broke.

(He didn't have to explain to her that it had been longer than ever before.)

Rory glanced all around them, up and down the wharf dimly illuminated by lanterns. Ship bells clanged distantly, but there was no sound of a little blue police box. The pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place. "You're alone," he murmured.

"No, I am _not,_" Amy said fiercely, grabbing his arms like a vise. "Not anymore. And neither are you, we never will be."

He could read the rest of the story in her eyes. "But- Amy, you- you came alone. You-"

She rudely interrupted, stopping his lips with her own.

(They had kissed on the Lost Moon of Poosh, and at the height of the French Revolution with the bullets whizzing behind them. It hadn't ever been quite like this.)

"I blinked," Amy told him quietly. "All I did was blink, Rory. Nothing at all, right?" She choked back a sob.

(He kissed her this time. A kiss that would have made the Doctor blush.)

"The Doctor-" Rory began. "What about-"

"He knows. He knows I had to. He'll be fine. He's got River," Amy stated, averting her eyes. And then she repeated, as if to reassure herself. "He'll be just fine."

As if her heart didn't break for him. As if those were all happy reunion tears she was shedding.

(He knew better.)

"You'll never see them again. We won't ever- it's my fault." Rory fixed brimming eyes to that sky so full of stars overhead. "I'm so sorry, Amy."

"Will you _shut up_, Rory?"

(A kiss that drove both of them mad.)

"It's not your fault, nothing is." Amy pressed her face into his neck. "Don't you apologize to me ever again. Do you hear me?"

"Sorry," he whispered, kissing her ear, simply because he could.

"You wonderful, beautiful man, with your wonderful, stupid face. I hate you."

(He knew that sometimes _I hate you _was Amy Pond for _I hope you know I would tear apart the world for you. I would give my life for you. And I did._)

By that definition, he hated her, too.

* * *

**Thanks for reading and to everyone who reviewed! Hope you enjoyed! :D**


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